politicalbetting.com

Q4 2008 now becomes the favourite date?

The Sun’s Trevor Kavanagh runs through all the options on who will be able to tell Gordon and ends up by quoting a friend – “It has to be Sarah,” said a friend. “Nobody in this Cabinet has the balls to do it.”

The general consensus, though, is that is has to be soon.

In the departure date betting Oct–Dec 2008 has now become the 1.7/1 favourite. Second favourite is July – September 2008.

Mike Smithson

What is going to bring Brown’s position to a head?

Yet again it is Gordon Brown’s future that continues to dominate UK politics. In her Monday Guardian column the former Brown enthusiast, Jackie Ashley, makes a powerful call on leading ministers and others within the Labour party to take some action to “end the drift”.

Either they should come out and support the Prime Minister or they must act to get rid of him and this, she argues, has to be resolved by the September conference season.

“Talking to ministers over the past few weeks, I have been struck by how fatalistic they have become. They do not seem, in the main, to be rebellious, angry or even despairing. Despair is too energetic a word. They seem clinically depressed, tired and flat. There has been talk of a posse of 15 junior ministers going to Brown to tell him the game is up but the consensus is that it won’t happen – in effect because they cannot be bothered. There is no plot. There is no plan. Some tell me they’ve started trying to avoid going out to social gatherings because of the ear-bashing they get, and find that when they go to official functions, it is their Tory opposite number who is sitting next to the most interesting and important people. It’s as if they were already in opposition: in power but also history.”

I can see that last line being picked up by Cameron for the next PMQs.

We’ve discussed all this at length and it is still hard to see how this can be brought to a head. I think Ashley is right – senior Labour figures have got to jump one way or the other – enthusiastically support Gordon or make a move for change.

Is it going to happen? Maybe it will be Labour’s precarious financial position that finally brings it to a head? Maybe a major donor could come forward to offer emergency funding but only on the condition that the current uncertainty is resolved? Maybe Miliband will see that the only way he can get the top job is by being the assassin now?

At every stage over Gordon the Labour party has surprised me. A year ago I could not fathom how 313 members of the parliamentary party could ignore the overwhelming polling evidence that Brown would be an electoral disaster. Now I cannot understand how their thirst for power has apparently dried up.

Next Labour leader betting.

Mike Smithson

Please continue the discussion here.

Is it just recently or have you thought so all along?

It’s becoming very difficult to find anybody any more who still says positive things about Gordon Brown’s electability. One after another in recent months former great supporters of the ex-Chancellor have come to the same conclusion about the man they cheered into Downing Street at the end of June last year.

But when did you start to realise that he did not have it? When did you conclude that Labour would be heading for a disaster under his leadership?

The Brown-loyalists, in public at least, still argue that all is due to the economic down-turn and that if Labour can convince the public that it’s world events and it’s not Labour’s fault then it will all be OK.

That is clutching at straws – the reality is that they cannot distance themselves from the man for even if the economy was still going strong I think Gordon would still be in trouble.

I am very struck by Alan Watkins in the Independent on Sunday this morning. He writes: “Towards the middle of his Chancellorship, as I was listening to a Budget performance, the thought occurred to me: This man is unable to make a speech. He rushes his sentences. He gabbles his words. His pronunciation is grotesque: nothing to do with being Scottish, for most speakers from the Celtic nations have a natural declamatory gift, but perfectly ordinary words come out mangled..More than this (so I thought at the time), Mr Brown cannot be bothered to learn. He lacks any courtesy to his audience. He is content to plough on, and we are lucky to be allowed to listen to his words at all.”

To me, as those who have been visiting the site for long will have read, Gordon has always been an appalling communicator. But it’s Watkins’s“..can’t be bothered to learn. He lacks any courtesy to his audience..” that really strikes home.

Poor communicators, like Maggie Thatcher, can work hard at their style and improve. Gordon simply doesn’t see this as being important. The result is a man simply unable to be a coherent leader in the modern age.

The only issues now are when and how he departs.

Mike Smithson